


October 27th - Supernatural Creatures

by omgericzimmermann (HMSLusitania)



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [9]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 13 Days of Halloween, M/M, Vampire AU, Vampire Hunter AU, at least in name, because it does, erzsebet bathroy is there, everyone regrets their life choices, it takes place in budapest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-23 12:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8328253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSLusitania/pseuds/omgericzimmermann
Summary: Jack's whole family have been vampire hunters for as long as any of them can remember. But a chance encounter on a photography assignment in Budapest has Jack questioning everything he's learned - or hasn't learned - about the species. It...it helps that the vampires he meets are hot blonds.  Day 9 of the 13 Days of Halloween.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The labyrinth where Jack meets Bitty and Kent is an absolutely real place. I have been there. It's creepy as fuck.

Photography was the perfect cover story, Jack decided.

It had started as a hobby, so many years ago, but now he had the excuse of widely followed social media accounts, a few coffee table book deals, and sometimes corporate sponsorship to keep him travelling and in good financial status. It gave him reason to jet off to Budapest, right at the start of fall when fog hung over the Danube in crisp curtains, shrouding the spires of the Halls of Parliament and hiding the castle across the river from view entirely.

The vampires Jack hunted still lurked in numbers in the old world, and he’d heard tell of ones that preyed on tourists at the mineral baths, ones that still wandered the ruins of Aquincum north of the city, vampires who had been turned when the Impaler himself was alive in the cities, maybe even the ones who had turned Dracula.

But no, lore had it that the nameless vampire who had turned Vlad Ţepeş and then been so greatly outshone by his or her own pupil had been long since dispatched, possibly even by Dracula himself. Jack wasn’t looking for him anyway. And of course, Dracula hadn’t made it to their modern age, as far as Jack knew. The only one of the old ones still named and still wandering the world somewhere, the great white whale for every vampire hunter, was Báthory Erzsébet, and she hadn’t been spotted for several decades.

No, Jack was in Budapest hunting smaller prey.

Jack was good at what he did. Both the photography and the vampire hunting came easily to him, although he worked very hard at perfecting his techniques. He was possibly the best in the business.

It was the arrogance that got him, in the end.

He decided his first point of business in Budapest was going to be the photo series he was doing for National Geographic Traveller, aimed at capturing the old world charm of cities like Budapest, Vienna, Bucharest, Prague, Kiev. Jack had jumped at the chance, since it was hunting season. Fall was always the best for vampires, since the sun was low enough on the horizon that they could usually go out during the day.

He made his way into Buda, along the banks of the river past the statue of Empress Elizabeth, and to the funicular that would take him up to the grounds of the castle. People dotted the cafés, drinking foamy coffees and eating picture perfect layered desserts. Jack would have to get pictures later for his Instagram. As it was, he snapped a few pictures of the castle, and made his way into the rest of the castle district. The painted buildings loomed overhead, casting shadows onto the streets. Combined with the mist, it was perfect vampire weather.

Jack wandered towards the multihued tiles that made up the roof of Matthias Church, and crossed the stones to the parapet looking out over the river. There were a healthy number of tourists present as well, but very few of them were speaking English. Jack’s other language was French, rather than anything helpful in his current line of work. French vampires had made an agreement with the vampire hunters a long time ago.

Jack looked out across the river, at the spines sticking out of the Halls of Parliament, at the dome of St Stephen’s Basilica, and then turned around. There was one place he had to visit before he left the castle district.

It wasn’t the sort of place any self-respecting vampire would be caught, alive or dead, but Jack wanted to go anyway. The labyrinth that wound under the hill was one of the spookiest places he’d ever been, and that included the time he’d got lost in the Parisian catacombs as a child. Half the tunnels weren’t lit, and many more of them were lit in a poor fashion that made it easy to imagine the shadows coming to life. The creepiest part wasn’t the bad lighting, of course. It was the wax mannequins dressed up in 18th century clothes set up to match the plot of an opera, and the opera music that blared at that part of the labyrinth along with the fact the wax of the mannequins was starting to fall apart in the chill humid air.

Jack snapped a few pictures of them and headed along the unlit tunnels, past the holding cells for prisoners in days gone by, and into the junction that would lead him to Dracula’s chamber if he felt so inclined. Jack was, in fact, headed that direction.

He stopped at the mouth of the sloping tunnel to read the painted plaque detailing the horrific accomplishments of Dracula, which included cutting prisoners’ feet and having goats lick them raw, which, honestly, Jack had heard of vampires doing weirder things. He figured that must’ve been from before he got turned to a vampire.

Jack was just starting to walk down the sloping, smoke-machine fog filled, blue lit tunnel towards Dracula’s supposed grave when a pair of American voices drifted back up to him.

“I mean, they could’a at least had a coffin,” one man said. Jack could almost see the pout on the anonymous man with the southern accent. “But just some granite slab in the rock? Come on now.”

“I know, Bits, it’s the worst,” another man - this one from somewhere north, maybe upstate New York? – replied. He sounded bored, maybe like he wasn’t really paying attention.

“I mean, if you’re _gonna_ say you’ve got Dracula’s grave right here in the labyrinth prison where he was tied up for a few years before he ran off with the king’s daughter or whatever, at least stick to traditional folklore about it and give the man an above ground coffin,” the first man, Bits apparently, complained. “And look at this! No grave dirt! How’s the man supposed to travel?”

“The grave dirt thing is actually a myth,” Jack couldn’t stop himself from saying as he got to the end of the tunnel. The blue lights played off the smoke machine’s mist, and illuminated the red granite slab in strange ways. The two men standing on the other side of it were stunning. One was strawberry blond, and a little taller, well built like an athlete. The other’s blond was closer to honey, and his eyes were much warmer. He was shorter too, but just as nicely shaped.

“Oh yeah?” the taller asked, revealing himself to be the New Yorker.

“Yeah, and so is the running water thing,” Jack said. “ Ghosts, on the other hand, they can’t cross running freshwater.”

“Spend a lot of time studying folklore?” the New Yorker asked, draping an arm across the southerner’s shoulders.

“It’s a hobby,” Jack said with a shrug.

“What about that camera hangin’ around your neck?” Bits asked. “That a hobby too?”

“Profession,” Jack replied, unable to keep from smiling at them. From the way the taller blond had his arm draped across Bits’ shoulder and the way Bits’ hand was resting casually just below the other man’s heart, Jack was fairly certain they were in love. And his dad could give him all the shit he wanted about Jack being a curmudgeon who was married to his job, but Jack didn’t ever let the opportunity for portrait photography got to waste.

“Do you want me to take your picture?” Jack asked. They exchanged a look. “I don’t get a lot of opportunities to do portrait photography.”

“Can we get a copy?” the not-Bits one asked.

“Yeah, but I use film, so I’ll have to get it developed first,” Jack said.

They exchanged a look with a casualness that suggested they’d been together for a very, very long time. Longer than Jack would’ve expected based on their ages.

“Well I suppose that’s fine,” Bits said. “We can buy you a drink while you get it done at the CVS or whatever it is they’ve got in Hungary.”

Jack agreed and snapped their picture. He took a backup for safety’s sake and the three of them left the labyrinth together. Outside, night had fallen upon the city and it glowed through the mist off the river. With the orange leaves on the trees, it was exactly what Jack always thought fall was supposed to be. At Kent’s suggestion, because that was the other guy’s name, they got on one of the trams and crossed the river back into Pest. They passed the grand market, Jack making a mental note to go back later and get a few pictures, and hopped off at Saint Stephen’s so Jack could get a picture of it with the midnight blue sky behind it.

Their destination was one of the ruin pubs that Budapest was getting a reputation for, and Jack was more than happy to squeeze into a table with the two of them. He was trying not to think about the fact they were both exactly his type, because surely that was just going to make things weird and complicated. He was here to do a job – multiple jobs in fact – and getting distracted by hot blond American tourists who were in a relationship with each other was not part of that agenda.

But he was also fairly certain that was Kent’s hand on his thigh.

“You know,” Bitty – because that was his name, it was Bitty not Bits – said, the light from the reclaimed disco ball glinting off the neon exit signs and then off his hair. “The photo place was right next to our hotel.”

He punctuated this by licking the whipped cream off his spoon while making eye contact with Jack. Jack swallowed almost nervously, and Kent squeezed his thigh.

“Maybe you’ll have to come up and show us your work,” Kent suggested.

One night wasn’t going to make his life any more difficult, Jack decided.

“Sure,” he said, well aware he was starting to blush as Kent’s hand crept up his thigh. Like he knew exactly what Kent was doing, Bitty shot Kent a disapproving look, and Kent retracted his hand.

“Look, Bits, if we’re gonna seduce the man, we have to make our intentions clear,” Kent said.

“You can make them perfectly clear without groping him under the table,” Bitty said, rolling his eyes.

Jack cleared his throat, because he didn’t think it was necessarily appropriate to mention he was absolutely fine with Kent groping him under the table.

“Then I say we go get the pictures and go back to your hotel to, uh, look them over,” Jack suggested.

Bitty’s answering grin was practically wicked.

They didn’t end up opening the picture packet, it just stayed on the bedside table in their hotel suite. As the guest to this event, Jack was perfectly happy to let them set the pace. He was never entirely sure which blond he was kissing, which one was sucking hickeys onto his chest and thighs. It didn’t really matter though, since they ended up in the same distorted pile of limbs at the end anyway, each of them resting their heads on his chest. Jack was sort of touched by the fact Kent had his hand on Bitty’s waist when he opened his eyes briefly around dawn. It wasn’t necessarily a possessive gesture, but one of reassurance, the notion of “I’m right here.”

“Get the curtain, baby, you’re starting to glow,” Bitty mumbled tiredly. Jack didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but Kent got up and closed the curtains anyway. He got right back into bed, and put his hand on Bitty’s waist again without barely opening his eyes.

The next time Jack woke up he was alone in bed. He could hear Bitty and Kent whispering from the sitting area, though, and to his confusion, they sounded worried.

“Maybe he doesn’t know?” Bitty whispered.

“Doesn’t – Bits, you were the one who kept biting him last night!” Kent’s voice was harsher, which Jack took to be a bad sign. He’d thought that maybe they just had a particularly accepting and open relationship, but if he was going to have to get in the middle of some kind of domestic dispute…

“Humans like being bitten, Kenny, it’s why people like us are still alive!” Bitty whispered back.

Oh.

Oh shit.

“But this is Jack _Zimmermann_!” Kent insisted. “Do you even know who Bad Bob _is_?”

“I am not a child, Kent Parson, I was in Montreal in ’78 just like you!” Bitty snapped.

“Jesus, Bits, we’ve gotta get out of here,” Kent said.

Jack opened his eyes and sat up, staring at the two in the sitting room. He’d never seen a vampire in daylight before, and he realised he still believed they were supposed to go up in smoke. Instead, their pale skin seemed to shine like polished marble, like an old Bernini or Michelangelo statue. That must have been why Bitty told Kent to close the curtains.

When they heard him move, they both spun around, Kent forcing Bitty behind him. Kent’s grey eyes were wide in…fear. They were scared of him, the same way he’d always been raised to fear vampires.

“Look man, last night was fun, but we don’t want any trouble,” Kent said, clearly trying to force Bitty to run. Bitty stayed right behind him, his arms wrapped around Kent’s chest. His huge brown eyes peered over Kent’s shoulder at Jack. He looked betrayed, which was not an expression Jack was used to seeing on a vampire’s face.

“You don’t want any trouble,” Jack repeated, suddenly aware he was still naked. His stakes were in his bag, which was on the other side of the hotel room – on the other side of Bitty and Kent.

“Bits just go,” Kent whispered. “I can hold him off.”

“Like hell,” Bitty whispered back, although his eyes didn’t leave Jack.

On a human, Jack imagined he’d see a pulse jumping in Kent’s neck out of panic, but not on a vampire. Faint colour had risen to the apples of Kent’s cheeks and his eyes were wide, but that was it. In that moment, Jack realised he knew a lot about vampires. They were weakest at high noon, although they could survive in daylight; they didn’t need grave dirt to travel, although it made them stronger on long trips; they didn’t sleep in coffins; they weren’t actually affected by crosses or garlic, but the early vampires had been sent into peals of intense Catholic guilt that had transformed into a cultural memory throughout all of vampire kind, and the garlic thing was just because they had particularly sensitive noses and nothing was worse on a sensitive nose than garlic; the surest way to kill one was to drive a wooden stake through its heart, force a brick into its mouth once it was dead, and burn it on a pyre. He’d never been raised to think of them as people with their own individual personalities, their own societies, their own beliefs and interpersonal connections. But the way Bitty was clinging to Kent, and the way Kent was trying to get him to run – it was love. It was plain as stark daylight that they loved each other, maybe even more fiercely than any humans Jack knew.

“Is this what you do? Is this why you Zimmermanns are so damn good at killing people like us?” Kent asked, backing away from Jack. “You seek us out, get us vulnerable, and then kill us?”

“Is that what _you_ do?” Jack shot back. “You find tourists and seduce them back to your hotel room and then eat them?”

He needed to find his underwear. This was not a confrontation he wanted to take part in while naked.

“Eat the – I haven’t killed anyone in over a century!” Bitty exclaimed, glaring at Jack still over Kent’s shoulder. “And Kenny hasn’t killed anyone for…gosh, almost two?”

“I mean, are we counting Chris?” Kent asked.

“Okay, saving a kid from dying of bullet wounds by turning him into a vampire because we didn’t have time to get him to the chopper is not the same thing as killing him,” Bitty replied.

And Jack officially knew nothing about vampires. Fortunately, he noticed his underwear lying on the floor and grabbed them, pulling them on quickly.

“So you just…what? Partially drain someone of blood?” Jack asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He watched them flinch and wondered if maybe the relationship between vampires and vampire hunters was more like the relationship between spiders and humans – they’re just as scared of you as you are of them.

“Gosh no!” Bitty said, which Jack thought was a pretty odd turn of phrase for a centuries-old vampire who’d spent the previous night doing thoroughly filthy sex acts. “Just some light snacking. Honestly, in this day and age? People pretty much line up for a chance to get bitten by a real vampire.”

Jack blinked at him, not entirely sure what to make of that statement.

“Light snacking?” he asked.

“It just feels like a hickey,” Kent supplied. “Maybe like…a tablespoon of blood.”

With a sinking feeling in his gut, Jack looked down at his bare thighs, where surely there ought to have been hickeys from the night before. There was nothing.

Jack took a deep breath and stepped forward. They jumped back, one step closer to the door, neither of them taking their eyes off him.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Jack heard himself say. He was even more surprised to realise he meant it. “It would be some kind of fucked up deplorable thing to sleep with someone and then murder them.”

“It’s been a fairly common MO for many famous serial killers,” Kent replied.

The words “serial killer” reverberated in Jack’s skull and he didn’t like them. Not one bit. But that was what vampire hunters were, technically, weren’t they.

“Do you guys care if I order room service?” he asked, picking up the menu from the sideboard.

Bitty and Kent exchanged looks.

“Um, sure?” Bitty said.

Jack nodded and ordered enough food that if there was a chance either vampire felt like human food they could partake.

“I’ve never actually spoken to a vampire before,” Jack said.

“And you’ve been hunting them for _how_ long?” Bitty demanded, ducking out from behind Kent and sitting down on one of the sofas. It was not the one that Jack shared, but it was close enough. Kent looked between them, obviously apprehensive, and then sat next to Bitty.

“My entire life,” Jack said. He didn’t want to turn the day into an Anne Rice novel, but at the same time, he felt like he was lacking some serious pieces of information. “So…uh…how old are you guys?”

“Well, let’s see…Kenny’s grandma is old Bess, so he would’ve been turned in…16-something early,” Bitty said.

“You can’t call her old Bess while we’re in her country, she’ll find you and hurt you!” Kent insisted.

Jack blinked. “Your grandmother was Bathóry Erzsebet.”

“Not my human grandmother,” Kent said. “She sired my sire.”

Jack nodded, slowly.

“I would’ve died in one of our first winters in Jamestown, but someone turned me, so it’s all good,” Bitty said.

 _Jamestown_. Like the settlement in Virginia in 1607.

“So were you really annoyed when Lincoln made Plymouth the more culturally prominent settlement so that the North had a claim to be the first part of the United States rather than Jamestown during the Civil War?” Jack heard himself ask.

Kent and Bitty stared at him and then looked at each other. Jack’s awkwardness was covered by the room service arriving. He thought he heard them mutter something about running for the fire escape, but they were still there when Jack brought the tray over.

“You said you turned someone named Chris?” Jack prompted.

“Oh, yeah,” Bitty said. He sighed. “World War Two was a problem. Poor kid got shot, and we were too far away from medical help. He was gonna die, so I turned him.”

Jack nodded again. “Does that make him your…son?”

“Sure does!” Bitty enthused, and suddenly there was a wallet and he was flipping through it for a picture. Jack saw strings of pictures hanging out of Bitty’s wallet, and accidentally saw the blatant affection in Kent’s eyes while he watched Bitty thumb through pictures of their family.

Family. Vampires had _family_. They had parents and kids and – and how the hell was he supposed to go back to vampire hunting after this?

“Bits,” Kent said softly. “Do you really want to show a _Zimmermann_ pictures of our family?”

Bitty looked up with sharp eyes, aimed first at Kent and then focused in on Jack. “I don’t think he’s gonna be hunting any vampires anytime soon, sugar. After all, you fucked him so good last night I’m shocked he can stand on his own volition. It’s gonna take a while for him to get over this. Isn’t that right, pumpkin?”

Jack wanted to protest the notion of being called “pumpkin” but Bitty made it sound both terrifying and endearing all at once.

“Yeah I think I’m going to need to look back over my life choices,” Jack agreed, although in a small voice. He meant it though.

“Oh it’s not your fault, pumpkin,” Bitty said, finally settling on a picture. “Y’all are just as brainwashed as some of our people. Hell, my first clan completely disowned me just for bein’ gay.”

Jack blinked.

“Well, technically I think the term is either ‘disavowed’ or ‘excommunicated’?” Bitty continued. “But if Kenny hadn’t found me I’d’ve been lunch meat way back in 1764. The French and Indian War really did do _some_ good things.”

“You guys have been together since 1764?” Jack asked.

“Vampires mate for life,” Kent said, obviously confused that it was even a question Jack would be asking. “Well, after-life.”

“What happens if one of the pair dies?” Jack asked.

Both Bitty and Kent fell silent.

“Most of the horror stories your kind have heard? They come from the vampires without their other half,” Kent said. “And usually they only get so loud and ostentatious about it because they’re trying to commit suicide-by-vampire-killer. You people never hear about those of us who don’t want to be found.”

Part of Jack’s brain was saying that surely his family and their partners in this didn’t know that, that they didn’t realise vampires mated for life, or that they didn’t realise how most vampires seemed to only take willing humans for “light snacking”. But part of him was sure they knew and just…didn’t care. And he didn’t like that.

“Now since you’re a photographer in addition to being the sort of monster we tell our kids about at night,” Bitty said, which Jack tried not to find offensive, “what do you think? We were gonna get professional shots done, but never got around to it since everyone’s too hard to corral?”

Bitty handed Jack a picture. In it, an entire family was crammed onto a porch of an old farmhouse somewhere Jack couldn’t identify. Bitty and Kent were in the middle, smiling like proud parents. Jack wasn’t sure how many of the others were their kids, but he got a sense it was a fair number.

Bitty slowly crossed to Jack’s couch, and Jack noticed for the first time that he was cooler than normal humans.

“Look, Jack, we might not be human, but we are people,” Bitty said.

“And we don’t really kill anyone,” Kent added. “Not anymore.”

“But you used to,” Jack said.

“So do you,” Kent reminded him. “You just managed to make yourself believe it was okay because we’re not human.”

Jack swallowed nervously. They weren’t human, they were absolutely correct about that. But he could also remember exactly how their lips felt against his skin, could see the hope in their eyes that maybe they’d stopped one vampire hunter from hurting their people.

“So do couples who’ve been together for 250 years usually pick up strangers at creepy museums?” Jack asked.

Bitty snorted.

“Only the incredibly attractive ones,” Kent said. “We’ve got to mix things up sometimes.”

Jack had a feeling he was going to regret the next words out of his mouth, but that didn’t stop him from saying them.

“It really doesn’t hurt to get bitten by a vampire?” he asked.

Bitty grinned at him, fangs just barely protruding over his bottom lip. “Curious?”

Worryingly so, if Jack had to describe it. He couldn’t figure out how it wouldn’t hurt to have fangs sticking into his body. He – he wanted to know.

“Yes,” he admitted. Kent laughed at him from his couch while Bitty leaned forward and pressed what felt like a kiss to the side of Jack’s neck. There was the slightest scrape of teeth against his skin, but it was sensual, not painful. He did feel it though, shooting all the way down his chest to his groin.

Bitty leaned back and Jack was almost surprised to see there was a splash of scarlet blood on his bottom lip. Just the faintest rosy glow touched Bitty’s cheeks. Jack kept staring at the scarlet on Bitty’s lip until Kent crossed to their couch and brushed it off with his thumb. Jack just stared, vaguely aware that his mouth was slack, while Kent licked the blood off his thumb.

It was everything he’d been taught to fear, to avoid, to worry about. Vampires were humans’ only natural predators, and it was his due, his family’s purpose, to prevent them from doing _exactly_ what they’d just done to Jack. Vampires were supposed to be soulless and evil. They weren’t supposed to have families and spouses and be people and –

Jack interrupted his own train of thought by surging forward and kissing Kent. It was sloppy and undignified and there was still a tang of iron on Kent’s tongue and Jack worried himself by liking it.

None of them left the hotel room for several days. And then, one morning, Jack woke to discover they were gone. The only signs that they’d been there at all were the pictures Jack had taken, of the two of them looking hopelessly besotted with each other in a dark cave housing Dracula’s supposed tomb, and a note pinned to a box.

Jack picked up the note. All it said was “see you soon” in perfect copperplate cursive. In the box, Jack found a mask.

**Author's Note:**

> I got way too invested in this AU. So here's Bitty and Kent's vampire family, because that's a thing that happened. 
> 
> Adam, lived 1680-1705. Kent's son, prior to meeting Bitty.  
> -Adam's partner Justin, 1806-1831  
> B. Knight, lived 1715-1739. Bitty's son, prior to meeting Kent.  
> \- B's partner, Larissa. 1840-1862.  
> Derek, lived 1720-1747. Bitty's son, prior to meeting Kent.  
> -Derek's partner Will, 1648-1670  
> \--their son, Anthony, 1945-1966.  
> Camilla, lived 1745-1769. Their first child together.  
> March, lived 1843-1865. Their second child together.  
> -Her partner April, 1840-1865.  
> Chris, lived 1923-1944. Their third child together.  
> -His partner Caitlin, 1902-1927. 
> 
> General Housekeeping/ ~~Hauskeeping???~~  
>  Thank you for participating in the 13 days of halloween!  
> 


End file.
